Palliative
by squigglysquid
Summary: Companion piece to Resurgence Ch.34- Chellick is approached by the man he trained, worked side-by-side with, saw married, and thought dead two years ago in battle beaten armor, scars across his face, and a burning fire in his eyes.


I am not an old man. My plates haven't begun to thin and crack, their natural shine dull and dry, and my mind and body are as sharp as they've always been, my position higher upon the tiers of Citadel Security only in title and not in capabilities. Physically, I am just as I was twenty-eight years ago when I was but a young man climbing off the shuttle to the start of my life as an adult in the grueling rain that seemed to constantly flow down upon the instructions camp on my home colony.

Of course, some of my human subordinates have taken to calling me 'old fashioned', but I know enough of their terms to realize it is more on my stern views on their occasional attempts to skirt our standard rules of operation. My honor to respect regulation, to ensure my men do their jobs while still staying within the law, is nothing different from any other blue-blooded Turian and I take their innocent jokes with little seriousness. They know me well and my apparent inability to bend the rules to fit our goals, but that does not make me an old man.

It is when a ghost walks into my offices that I truly begin to question my beliefs.

Sitting at my desk, I read through a report for a third time, sighing at the fact that one of my officers has managed to cause more property damage capturing a suspect than I could even imagine possible. With no reasonable explanation coming to light this last time of their actions, I stand in decision. Such behavior cannot go on uncontrolled and desk suspension should convince my officer against treating the Citadel like their sparring arena.

 _Reminds me of an old friend_ , I think with a slight twitch to my mandible, wondering where the young Turian is after so long. Despite my hopes contrary, I am no fool nor am I blind. I remember the public news well, the seemingly universe-wide funeral, and I know that we may all have been mourning two soldiers instead of the one that had been on everyone's tongue.

If she was gone, then so was he. I didn't have to be the one to see them join officially to know that wherever she goes, he will follow and vice versa. I am not a romantic man, but I know for certain from personal experience that my old friend wouldn't be far behind his mate should she have found her way to the Spirits.

I sigh deeply at the pointless loss, the unavoidable truth that soldiers' deaths are inevitable that has been taught to me since birth little consolation for the deaths of two fighting spirits outside of any true battle. Any Turian can respect a death with a gun in our hands, our bodies only falling when there is no more fight within our bones, and I am almost angered for them, my once-friends, for not receiving such an honorable way to join their Spirits. She in an ambush on patrol in space before she could take up arms and he most likely by his own hand in attempts to join her beyond the veil.

Looking out of the large window in my office, I notice the odd stillness to my men, as if frozen in place. Confused at what's going on, I move to my door to get a better look at the large space, the threshold designed in such a way that I can see the entirety of my men from a single point much like a ship. I can't imagine what could have my men, highly-trained officers of the law, gaping in awe and murmuring in hushed voices like pups in pre-instructional school, and, to be honest, I can't deny the slight irritation at their unprofessionalism.

Opening the door, preparing to lay out orders and reprimands for becoming distracted, my eyes lock immediately on the figure not at home among the pristine halls of my precinct, despite the achingly similar blue and black on his armor like our own. My gizzard feels as if it has fallen to my feet as my eyes widen in instant recognition, not needing to see him look up from where he speaks with one of my men – his name escapes me in this moment of my usual control slipping – and I hear my voice as if coming from somewhere around me and not directly from my mouth plates. "Garrus?!"

I don't expect him to look up, to hear me, and almost wonder if I wish he's just a mirage of my exhaustion, nothing more than an assurance I should get more rest and work less, but he does, his head swiveling up from my officer. The sight of him sends my insides churning once more, the distinct change in the way he holds himself so different from how I remember that it's painfully obvious that he is here, now. Had he stood there in the slim armors he once wore here, or even while gone with his mate, young and eager, I could dismiss him, tell myself he is not this new, haggard man that carries that unthrowable weight of experience.

Collecting myself enough to maintain my form of control among my men, I address them, his eyes like burning coals against my plates. "Back to work, all of you." I force still the sensation of wanting to roll my shoulders, to fight off the chill down my spine from his icy stare when it turns to me, that young Turian gone behind this mask. "Vakarian, in my office."

I leave my back to his approach, taking the chance to move to my terminal in order to grant us some form of privacy, although I'd be lying if I didn't also want this moment in order to prepare myself for what may have become of my old trainee, partner, _friend_. I know this man is the same, but I had expected him to be gone, the way of his mate.

Perhaps my denial to attempt any form of optimism is flawed. Perhaps the rumors are true, or at least close to the truth, and his mate, his wife, his bondmate, has returned from the land of the dead, or never died to begin with. Perhaps I am being too cynical and seeing too deeply into what isn't there, seeing pain and age on him when there are none.

My doubts shatter the moment I turn to address him properly, my valued control and professionalism falling to crash into millions of pieces upon the floors as my eyes take his battered form in. "Spirits, Garrus," doesn't seem to accurately voice my complete shock, like a shot to the gut, as my eyes flow over the still raw and obviously severe wounds under massive bandaging that wrap over his face. Even his own armor is cracked, charred, and missing large portions and I question how he's even alive.

"What happened to you?!" I say, just this side of crying out in anger at how he could have done this to himself and pain in seeing a man I once thought of as 'young, brash, and hotheaded' changed so much by the agony of his injuries and not experience as anyone would have wanted. "I had thought you were dead."

He may be alive here, but something of that officer I once trained, that became my friend despite my inability to separate work from life, is gone, burned away in that fire that burns now in his eyes. It is why I frown as I retake control of my raging vocals, needing to strangle down my shock and confusion to get to the bottom of his unbelievable visit. "Though I guess I wasn't far off."

His dry, derisive attempt to offer amusement hurts my ears, like talons against the chalky rocks that once formed outside my parents' home that was too low to actually hear beyond the sting in my ear canals, and my mandible tightens in attempt to control my reaction. "You don't need specifics, I'm sure, but this is nothing. Looks worse than it is."

"I doubt that." Yet, I can't force words from my tongue. Once look at his eyes, the fires dissipating for a moment, gone just as it appears, in order for me to see the flicker of memory and pain that remembrance brings. Garrus, my friend, a man young enough to consider a brother in age as well as I had in duty, really does believe his eternally disfigured face is _nothing_ to what lies in those memories he fights to withhold.

I would be in complete denial to say I don't know why he believes as he does. I was there for it all. I saw him walk into the Investigations wing so many years ago, that glowing visor over his eye and a spark for adventure in his eyes, his confidence boosted by the same woman I later was given the honor of being there to see bonded, married, to him. To see a Turian fall so hard, so deeply, for another in the way he did, in a way that is uncommon among all of us and thought only as a romantic frivolity of the past, means that I need no further explanation for the two years he has been gone.

 _To what purpose is such a connection with another if the loss of one leads to the destruction of another?_ Wherever he went, he had planned for more than the scars that will forever line his face, burning through plates to ignite those embers of predatory hunger that leave me questioning what unseen marks can cause that cold anger that had sent the icy freeze over my officers. I am unable to fathom such a fate that could have done this to him, but it is not of my concern or my business, so I don't question him further, knowing him enough from our times spent working together in what seems like another life – and it could very well be considered that for him, though he never physically left this plane of existence.

Offering a seat as I take to my desk, I hear the creak of his heavy armor as he adjusts to a seat never meant for a bulk his size. He stutters a bit and I see just a small flicker of that awkward and slightly unsure man I once knew, but he is gone as fast as he appeared, leaving me to wonder if the old C-Sec detective is lost or if he has become a part of this new, older Vakarian. "I didn't come for small talk, Decian."

I never let myself believe that he would return after disappearing so long ago, his desk, home, and training in the Spectres abandoned as if he too had died with Commander Jane Shepard – _Vakarian_ – had passed from this realm for 'small talk.' I never needed to see him here, like this, to know that he was gone, the man that was once the same young Turian I once spent nearly every working hour beside never to return to speak as if we were old friends. Consider me cynical, pessimistic, whatever you wish, but I did not make it to where I am, spend my life in my work instead of outside of it, not to be able to read those closest to me, to see that her death – whether true or a product of the media – would forever leave a mark on him, drag him out of a life he never seemed to fit into.

"No, I had assumed not. You came to ask for a favor," I say, knowing that this is more of a 'hey, Detective Chellick, can you tell me who runs the case out of Chora's Den so I can get that young woman out' kind of call for favor that his mate once came to me for and not the 'Decian, can you be witness to my wedding' kind. He wants to protest what I leave unsaid, to deny that we both know things have changed, but I grant him the dignity of trying to explain. "And while I would be willing to consider it, I know you. You have a way of making things messy, Garrus. You _and_ your mate."

"This doesn't have anything to do with her." Unsurprisingly, I see the first true reaction of emotion beyond that barely veiled anger and burning pitch in his eyes at the mention of her, his growl telling me answers to all the questions a more professional me was wondering. Yes, she truly is alive, and yes, it seems, she _was_ dead. How she managed that, I'll never burden myself in efforts to understand, but I can at least breathe a bit easier in knowing that he didn't follow her prematurely.

"Yes, it does. Everything with you has to do with her." _And she with you, because the two of you will forever be joined, two stars pulling and pushing within your own gravities._ Thinking of it exhausts me and I thank the Spirits I had never found my own bondmate because I don't know if I could manage such a tiring give-and-take that's beyond my own control. Maybe I am only basing this on the man before me, the shadow of a man I once knew, but if this, if he, is what becomes of those who find that mysterious bond, then I can't help but question that romanticized ideal of 'joined bliss.'

With hopes that I can break through the determined steel in his eyes, set water to the burning pitch that has brought him all but tearing through my doors, I look their depths, braving the flames in attempts to make him understand my position, my predicament. "I don't even need to know what you're going to ask to know that it won't end well. You aren't just going to come ask me for information or help without it turning into a giant disaster. If it comes back in any way, I could lose my job, Garrus."

"But you won't." His voice is deeper, stronger and more demanding in sheer tone than the years ago when he would actually attempt force with verbal demands. Does he know that the years have added that presence of command he's always sought? That ability to down lesser men with a look? "It may have been two years since you've last seen me, but I still know how C-Sec works. I'm asking for names, a direction, not access to case files or anything I couldn't find on my own. You couldn't be connected unless one of us openly admits to ever meeting for anything beyond two friends 'touching base' after two years." He stands and part of me thinks, no _knows,_ that, yes, he does know the power of his new form, gained through fire and pain. "But I understand if you don't want to help because you're right and I'm not going to apologize for that. I will stop at nothing to find the person I need, Chellick."

Can I let him go? Can I, with clear conscious, let him walk out of that door while a hatred darkens his eyes, throwing everything into a deadly shadow so that he can't see guilty from innocent? Does he still know the difference, or is he too far gone? Could me offering this one thing make sure he doesn't take matters into his own hands and possibly aim the loaded gun that is this new Garrus Vakarian at a target deserving of the burning pitch and fire? Can I really enforce the strict 'by the book' policy if I could potentially be saving a man I once thought as a friend, a near-brother, by keeping his anger from blinding him into doing something he'll regret?

"Wait," I call out as I bolt up from my seat, moving to intercept him before he can leave. Placing my hand to his shoulder, wordlessly asking in a single touch to remember the man he once was, the justice and law he once strived to uphold. "I will help you." _If only you will try to use whatever sense of dark justice you now employ on those who truly deserve it, for I know not what has become of you._ "What are you asking of me?"

His request, and my following offer of whatever I knew, goes by in a blur, my attention more on the visible shift of personality in the battered, but obviously not beaten as I can now see, man before me. As if a bleeding of entities in his features, his eyes sharpen with a more primal light, a true intent for violence that dances with the fiery anger, and his facial plates grow tight with pre-battle tension. He is preparing for battle of a kind, war upon whoever, whatever, stands in his way to this unnamed individual that has tried to slip through his grasp.

As he leaves, I can't help when my shoulders drop in exhaustion, my bones and plates hurting with an invisible pressure. The Garrus Vakarian I once knew, the man I helped shape into a detective outside of the shadow of his father, a friend I helped bond with the woman he loved - who loved him in return – and the man I was proud to see finally take the step into a position he idolized as a child and adult, is gone, I fear, and I have no idea of this new fiery Spirit of revenge that has claimed his place.

When a ghost in heavy, charred blue and black armor and scarred plates arrived at my office, smelling of smoke and heatsinks, realization and truth followed behind him. I had believed that my life was the same as it's always been, that I am as I have always been, but I see now that wasn't truly correct. In efforts to both try and limit disaster at the Spirit's hands and protect my once-friend, I did something I'd never imagine before. I gave information C-Sec officers fought hard to obtain, to try and form into a legally binding case, with the risk of being found out and losing not only the one thing that has been my life, but causing the good men and women to lose a chance at putting a criminal away.

I would repeat that, I know, because I hope for the return of that flicker of that man that once was, even if he is twisted by his experience. Anything is better than the soulless predator that wears his face to hunt within the walls of this station and I can only hope that my own help can only aid in soothing the beast.

Perhaps I only see the worst of the man, the raw nerves only surfacing around whatever unvoiced pain causes his anger and hate, and he truly is more than that deathly Spirit within? Does his own mate still see the old Garrus Vakarian within?

I am not an old man, but I can no longer fool myself into believing that things are as they once were in the universe. Whether or not this newer man is a force of destruction or a Spirit of forceful rebirth, I may never know, but I can't deny the residual weight his presence has left and the small thought that perhaps the bond he formed with his mate wasn't as detrimental as I once believed. Where once he was a satellite circling the brighter star of his mate, he is now a flaring, white-hot sun himself, with a gravity and influence all his own, and may everyone in their combined way take heed.

SquigglySquid says: An anon on the KinkMeme requested a short from Chellick's view on seeing Garrus as he is now, as Archangel. I don't know who you are, anon, but I hope this is what you're looking for and everyone feel free to give me your thoughts.


End file.
